Life after inflammatory breast cancer is filled with tennis and stupid surgeries! It's all good.

Monday, July 28, 2014

I Can Now See Phase 2 In The Rearview Mirror

There is no Phase 2 clipart so Phase 1 clipart will have to do.

My Phase 2 DIEP flap surgery was Friday and I came through the procedure much more easily than I ever would have expected to.

Phase 1 surgery was March 12th. The expectation was that twelve weeks after Phase 1, I would have Phase 2 and then I could schedule Phase 3 at some logical time down the road. Infection intervened so I had Phase 1B surgery to close recalcitrant wounds on May 7th, pushing back revision surgery. I am kind of missing some summer fun with the resultant delay, but it's okay.

It is kind of amazing what plastic surgeons can do. I had the DIEP flap transfer during the first leg of the procedure. The surgery was 8 1/2 hours long (with two plastic surgeons working in tandem). They prepared me for the outcome by saying that symmetry would be hard to achieve and that getting the tissue to live was the one and only priority. My tissue lived and was asymmetrical as promised.Phase 2 was about nipping and tucking and I am fairly happy with my nips and tucks. Surgery was about an hour and a half. I felt great the next day and was able to walk 12,000 Fitbit steps by the day after that. Today, I felt somewhat beleaguered but that is the nature of the beast. I never planned to do reconstruction after my bilateral mastectomy in 2008. It seemed like too much trouble. DIEP flap surgery was not yet invented. In 2008, reconstruction (without implants and due to radiation, I was not a candidate for implants) involved sectioning muscle from the lower abdomen and then tunneling the tissue up through the belly area so that the lower muscles could pretend to be breast tissue. The procedure was called a TRAM flap. I remember when I got the rather unpleasant news that I would need a mastectomy, my breast surgeon saying that I was in luck because I would get a free tummy tuck. I loved my surgeon but I don't think now, and I didn't think back then, that having one's lower abdomen transplanted to one's chest was a stroke of luck. In the intervening years, free TRAM flap surgery was invented which meant that the "flap" with abdominal muscle attached was not transported by subway under the skin but instead went priority airmail from south to north to take up residency "up yonder". DIEP flap surgery was a refinement to the free TRAM flap. With DIEP, tissue now is asked to move from south to north via airmail transit but no muscle is allowed onto the flight. In a
DIEP flap procedure, fat, skin, and blood vessels are cut
from the wall of the lower belly and moved up to the chest to rebuild the breast. The procedure is complex because fat, skin and blood vessels move only with great reluctance. They are resistant to change; they like their comfortable worry-free existence down south of the belly button. They have no desire to be northerners. Surgeons have to perform intricate microsurgery to cajole them to settle in to their new surroundings. The success or failure of the surgery is usually determined in the first 48 hours. 99% of the tissues that are told to move up north, or else, comply with their marching orders. 1% of renegade tissues decide they would rather die than live up north. Surgeons are vigilant to make sure that the tissues accept the inevitability of their new destiny. There is little time during the very long surgery for anything other than just convincing the tissues that they have a new home. Phase 2 surgery takes place on the tissue that has settled in and has joined the homeowner's association in the northern hemisphere. I was rattled about my Friday surgery, but it was really no big deal. I have some bruises and there are steri-strips covering up whatever the plastic surgeon did. I do know that I am now more symmetrical, for whatever that is worth. Phase 3 comes sometime in about 3 or 4 months. I might not discuss Phase 3 here. Just Google it... I am too shy to talk about it.

About Me

I love tennis. If I can play tennis, then probably anyone can play tennis. I started learning the game when I was 49 years old. The first time I played, I was out of breath after playing for 15 minutes. Now, while I am not as good as I want to be, I play almost every day and I take lots of lessons. If I could only retain what I hear...
I was diagnosed with advanced Inflammatory Breast Cancer in 2008. I played tennis throughout chemotherapy and radiation and took off seven weeks to recover from surgery. Right or wrong, I believe that I would not be alive today if not for my tennis playing (and if not for my excellent medical care all along the way.)